Be it resolved, the Twenty-second Amendment, limiting a president to two terms in office (or a maximum of 10 years as president), is the most vindictive, ill-conceived, anti-democratic constitutional ever adopted and is hereby repealed.

Most constitutional amendments, generally, have fit into two categories: extending rights (such as the franchise) to the citizens or correcting errors in the Constitution (such as the Twelfth Amendment). Yes, there was the adoption of an income tax (Sixteenth Amendment) and limiting Congress from upping its pay (or decreasing it) and having that take effect during the current term (Twenty-seventh), but from the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments), to emancipation (Thirteenth) and granting former slaves the right to vote (Fourteenth), to woman suffrage (Nineteenth), to granting D.C. electoral votes in presidential elections (Twenty-third), to eliminating the poll tax (Twenty-fourth), to granting 18-year-olds the right to vote (Twenty-sixth), there has been a seemingly inexorable march toward extending citizenship and encouraging greater participation and choice in elections.

Standing in stark contrast was the ratification, in 1951, of the Twenty-second Amendment. The Constitution did not stipulate any limit on presidential terms–indeed, as Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 69: “That magistrate is to be elected for four years; and is to be re-eligible as often as the people of the United States shall think him worthy of their confidence.” (Of course, Hamilton believed that presidents would be so subservient to Congress as election neared that in Federalist 71 he made a case for a life term for a president.) Still, when the country’s beloved first president, George Washington, retired after two terms, he set a de facto, informal “law” that was respected by America’s first 31 presidents that there should be rotation in office after two terms for the office of the presidency.

So, why the Twenty-second Amendment? Quite simply, politics. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt had won election in 1932 and reelection in 1936. In 1940, as Europe was engulfed in a war that threatened to draw in the United States and without a clear Democratic successor who could consolidate the New Deal, Roosevelt, who had earlier indicated misgivings about a third term, agreed to break Washington’s precedent. A general disinclination to change leadership amid crisis probably weighed heavily on the minds of voters—much more so than the perceived deep-seated opposition to a third term for a president—and Roosevelt romped to victory in 1940 and again in 1944.

In 1947, after Republicans won back control of Congress, they introduced an amendment, ratified four years later, that would limit any future president to two terms, a plot ostensibly to thwart the Democrats from gaining a future stranglehold on the presidency. Similar to efforts of Republicans in the 1990s to impose term limits on members of Congress (and other legislators), this was a short-sighted political calculation that had, at its core, a clear, understandable rationale.

Supporters of term limits believe in citizen legislators and rotation in office–that government needs new blood every now and again so that policies don’t become ossified and that people don’t become entrenched. That’s something that we can all believe in. But, ultimately, the remedy of artificially imposing a specific limit on how long anyone can serve is paternalistic and elitist–and, more importantly, anti-democratic.

Granted, voters have a penchant for reelecting incumbents of all sorts–the 95% plus incumbency rate of House members is obscene–and voters in most surveys (more so years ago than in the angry Tea Party days of the past couple of years) usually have a higher regard for their own member of Congress than for the institution as a whole. But, that’s democracy. And, imposing term limits on Congress and on the presidency is, in effect, a way of saving We the People from themselves–and creating an even more toxic environment to boot. (And, with turnout rates hovering usually about 50% in the past several decades, too many of We the People become the We the Electoral Bystanders, but that’s for another post.)

Presidents have a very limited window for passing important–but potentially controversial and sweeping–legislation. Usually, because of America’s two-year election cycles for Congress, such legislation and ideas are limited to the first and third years of a president’s term (Democrats, for example, wanted to complete health care last year), since politicians are often not in a compromising mood in years two and four, lest they give fodder to the other side in that year’s elections. Once a president gets reelected, it gets even worse. With no ability to run for a third term, the president essentially because a lame duck–or, worse still, a dead duck–and the campaign for a presidential successor begins in earnest the day after a president is elected to a second term. Because the president can’t be on the ballot again, he has less political capital to expend, and members of the president’s party in Congress understand that voting against him brings little in retribution.*

Notwithstanding Dwight Eisenhower‘s belief that he was able to be more bipartisan and govern in the public interest in his second term because of his ineligibility of running for a third term (a view that perhaps says something about his first term), if a president is doing a great job and voters think that person deserves a third–or even sixth–term, why not? If voters disapprove of the president, then it is their responsibility to go to the polls and throw him out–not some artificial law mandating that voters not even have the option of doing so.

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*(Presidential terms, in my view, are too short—I’d plump for a six-year presidential term to give a president more time to enact his agenda. And, I’d call for three-year terms for members of the House and six-year terms for senators with half up every three years as a way of thwarting, even a little, the constant campaign. But, again, that’s for another post.)